19-year old girl in Egypt patents new propulsion technique

http://www.humanipo.com/news/437/19-year-old-girl-in-egypt-invents-a-spacecraft-propulsion-device/

and
http://inhabitat.com/an-egyptian-te...t-generation-quantum-space-propulsion-system/

This... is actually sounding rather interesting! If this works as well as they hope, this will be huge!

 

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These stories are from 2 years ago. There is essentially nothing on the story since then. I have not been able to find any scientific examination of this claim. I assume it was a hoax or else some minor effect that was blown completely out of perspective by the press.

 

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Warning! Warning! Perpetual motion machine detected!

 

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Mustafa said the inventions generates energy for space vehicles from electric energy formed by Casimir-polder force, which occurs between separate surfaces and objects in a vacuum and by the zero-point energy considered as the lowest state of energy.

Pure bullshit

 

It's bunk.
Either a politically-motivated propaganda exercise (along the lines of the Iranian "stealth fighter"), vastly ignorant reporting or a deliberate hoax.
For example:

Here.

The girl used in the "publicity" is not a physicist, she's fashion designer and knows bugger all about any "space drive".
There is also, apparently, no "Aisha Mustafa" at the named university.

Oh, and the original article was written by a Nigerian guy called "John Thomas Diddymus" [sup]1[/sup].
Maybe he's trying another way of getting that $20M out his bank...


1 Given some of the crap that's come out Nigeria recently it could be a serious claim attributed to an Egyptian woman. (When I say "serious" I mean they think it's actual science and are pushing it in good (but hugely mistaken) faith).

 

Ah, damn... didn't realize it was so old

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_plasma_thruster

 

What has been happening in Egypt in the last few years?

Not making a comment one way or the other about the story, but it is fairly safe to say that unless someone outside of Egypt had picked up on and pursued the idea/work, nothing further could have come from it, in Egypt... Not to many reputable labs gonna just say hey that sounds fun let try it.., without a lot more than .....

One of my pet complaints is to always consider the context. Sometimes that might be who einstein's audience in Leyden was and sometimes it might be the social and political environment..., in Egypt today.

 

I think there is plenty of room for new inventions concerning satellite drives to replace ion drive. Solar sails can work well for this purpose but they are bulky and don't work well away from the sun. My favorite new invention for this purpose is Emdrive, which is a microwave device which requires an electrical input, no moving parts, with no other fuel, and has no apparent exhaust. There have many successful testings of this and similar devices, all of which have been successful. Much bigger devices may have a huge potential. It's development is presently being hampered because physics cannot figure out how it works. Many believe it violates the conservation of momentum, others claim otherwise.

This Egyptian invention, although exposed now for a few years, may also have a problem explaining how it works, that is acceptable to physicists. Like Emdrive, if test after test shows that the technology works, new physics may be needed to explain what is being observed, rather than denying possibilities like Emdrive critiques have done, and bear the brunt of future jokes concerning the ignorance of the deniers who long-delayed world-changing inventions.

 

thats it people, the Egyptians are attaching these new space thrusters underneath the Great Pyramids and evacuating themselves to Mars.

 

Yeah?
Is that why the test version that was specifically configured to not produce any thrust managed to give the same "output" as the "real" thing?
Now, which is more likely?
1. Eight days of initial tests on a piece of controversial technology in a NASA lab have proven all-new, extraordinary, physics-revolutionizing spacecraft propulsion in a manner so spectacular that the drive works even when it isn't set up to do anything at all; or
2. Somewhere in the testing process is some sort of procedural, mechanical, or interference error producing false results.

Have you not read the thread?
There is no "Egyptian invention".
It's a hoax or a politically-motivated red-herring.

 

How can I invest in this?

 

I'm betting on it being a hoax. John Thomas was slang for penis in DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, while Thomas Didymus (= "Twin")was the name of the apostle Thomas, a.k.a. Doubting Thomas, in the New Testament.

 

You misunderstand the technology. You are talking about the Cannae design. The cannae design involved 3 test models, not 2. One design involved slots and the other didn't. This was because the designer claimed the slots were a design improvement. Both designs produced about the same thrust. A third device designed as a control produced no thrust. The test conclusion was that the Cannae design produced thrust, but the slots were not a design improvement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive (see Cannae drive)

There is no controversy that Emdrive works. There have been 13 witnessed and confirmed tests, seven of which were from paid independent labs and NASA. The most successful of these was the Chinese redesign from the designers specifications.

The primary controversy is how it works since most physicists believe it violates the conservation of momentum since it is closed system with no measured exhaust.

This is my first exposure to the "Egyptian invention," whatever its validity or lack thereof.

But Emdrive is the future of space exploration for the world, and the inventor's and physicists' understandings of the technology will just have to catch up.

 

Not quite correct.

Also not quite correct.

And yet the "NASA" test which, according to one report, was 1,000 times more sensitive than that done by the Chinese, managed to produce an effect less than 1/1,000 that of the Chinese effort: IOW the better you measure the "effect" the less it seems to be.

And yet you couldn't take the time to read the thread...

In your opinion.

 

You can't generate motion by having two conductors attract each other while holding them apart at a fixed distance at the same time, whether it's via the Casimir vacuum force or by any other means. Equal and opposite reactions, no net acceleration or energy gains, the craft would just sit there floating in space. Would be lovely if it worked, and Egyptians could use a national prestige boost as much as anyone, but this just ain't the ticket.

 

I do believe there are certainly questions about how and if the EmDrive(s) in any of it incarnations actually work.., as well as questions about how it works if it does work.

When the latest press hyped NASA backed conference paper hit the streets I did take some time to look at some of the historical data from Shawyer and the more recent Chinese experiments.., and the recent conference paper written by a few NASA funded researchers.

First, none of the historical examples seem to have ever been done in vacuum and more than one theoretical explanation has been put forward. The latest paper, a conference appear or perhaps a NASA technical report, was not a description of the experiment the group was setting up to do... It was a description of where they were in the process of setting up a test of both Shawyer's EmDrive design and the Cannae design.., in vacuum... A test for which, they had not yet fully developed and/or assembled the equipment necessary, for a full vacuum test, at the time the conference paper/technical report was written. Unfortunately, it did include preliminary test data, consistent with claims from the historical examples, which were generated while designing the equipment needed to run a hard vacuum test... Note they did not run any test in vacuum, which is the objective, so they have presented no data of any real experimental value, yet!

How this new Egyptian girl's (?) idea may or may not be related, to the EmDrive and Cannae designs, if the report even represents a serious device of any kind, is really a long ways out there on any limb you would like to choose.

The question of whether either the EmDrive or Cannae design actually produce any real thrust, which cannot be explained as an artifact of having not been tested in vacuum, will just have to wait until the NASA group completes the design phase of their experimental setup and actually tests these devices in hard vacuum. If at that point, any thrust is detected, it will be time to hand the data over to the theoretical physicists, for a hard look. So far there seems to be very good arguments against most of the theoretical descriptions of how these things produce thrust.., so if they do wind up producing thrust, when properly tested in vacuum, it will be big news and worthy of some real theoretical and practical evaluation.

 

Vacuum testing requires a few different internal components. I believe Shawyer claims to have vacuum tested the device but to my knowledge, as you suggest, there have been no certified vacuum tests. NASA made a statement that their next prototype, more along the lines of Shawyer's design, will have vacuum compatible components.

The Chinese design was the best tested device to date. Shawyer claims a superconductive design(s) that if functional, scale ~1/100, could provide a heavy lift engine that would reduce the cost of space flight by a factor of maybe a hundred or more, according to Shawyer. The cannae design is less efficient based upon tests that I am aware of. All designs are more efficient than anything we presently have to date in ion drive propulsion.

How this new Egyptian girl's (?) idea may or may not be related, to the EmDrive and Cannae designs, if the report even represents a serious device of any kind, is really a long ways out there on any limb you would like to choose.

IMO there is absolutely no doubt that the devices produce thrust. From my "understanding" of how the device(s) works I also expect vacuum testing will give the same results.

 

The only big problem IMO is that there is little funding available, therefore development will progress very slowly until an entity with the proper funding can take over. I think presently a private company with available funding is the best bet. But once NASA is sold seemingly everybody would jump on board with their own designs.

I also expect many foreign governments will soon be involved, and that many of this development will be done in secret since a working engine would put any country years ahead of their competitors for both military and space-flight applications. Because of this military potential, once the military of capable countries become convinced concerning the technology, development funding would become almost limitless IMO.

Time will tell.

 

Pretty much my point or intended point was that, as far as I could find there has been no test of either design, in a hard vacuum. I did not read all of Shawyer's hype but what I did read did not include any documented test in vacuum. Shawyer even posts a video of what he claims is a working device.., operating in atmosphere, not vacuum. The NASA group's objective apears to me.., to run tests of both devices in hard vacuum.

And until the current models or some variation has been demonstrated to produce thrust, while in a hard vacuum, any results from tests in atmosphere have no meaning. The theory presented does not seem to hold up, at least I have seen several convincing arguments against, Shawyer's explaination.., or there is something about what we believe about reality that has thus far been unobserved...

The way I read the conference paper the problems that prevented a test in vacuum were not either device design itself. It was with other components that by design of the vacuum chamber test requirements needed to be inside the vacuum chamber.

Superficially, you are absolutely correct. Both devices seem to produce thrust. I don't think that has ever been an issue even for critiques. The real issue is how that thrust is produced and whether either or both designs would produce thrust in vacuum and sufficiently distant from.., say the suface of the earth, that the thrust is greater than any gravitational force it must compete with.

Personnally, I hope one, both or some variation of the devices works. And then I would be even more interested in what the final word on how and why they work turns out. If it involves vacuum energy as it seems the NASA group implies, it could lead to some exciting new theoretical development(s) ..., even perhaps some headway on how to move from QM to a better understanding of inertia and gravity.., you know maybe some progress in bridging the gap between GR and QM!

Call me a hopeful optimist, with no real (or realistic) expectations.